How to Write an Essay the Proffessional Way.

If you are a student of mine and have just read the Homework blog, this is the next blog I asked you to read. If you aren't a student of mine then be my guest: read it anyway. Apart from a few minor style elements which vary from institution to institution, these are the basics which apply to written assignments under the Tertiary Education systems outside of America. In fact, they might apply to America as well but, as I have no experience with the education system in the USA I'm not qualified to say.

First I'll provide a few general comments because experience shows that anything that comes AFTER the bullet-points is usually regarded as extra information and not really important.

In the first year of University many students think that markers are being unnecessarily picky [paying too much attention to unimportant things] when they subtract marks for punctuation. And, in first year, markers really blitz [pay incredibly close attention to] punctuation. One of the main reasons for this is that judging a person's literacy [ability to read and write English] depends a lot on punctuation which is an integral [something that can't be separated from something else] part of how well a person expresses themselves in English. By University level all students should know how to punctuate. Very few do. Very few even think it's important. Markers change this idea for them! The second reason for being such pains in the arses [annoying people] is to make sure that correct punctuation becomes second nature [automatic] to those who write English. A person who punctuates badly loses credibility [the ability to be believed]as a professional or knowledgeable person. If you don't know WHY your punctuation is being corrected consult a basic grammar book and learn the reason.

The thing Chinese students need to keep in mind if submitting work to a Western institution or teacher, is that we consider that people become adults at the age of 18. We really do. The laws of the land say so and so do we. So, by the age of 20 or 21 they certainly are not treated any differently from the way we treat all other adults. They are therefore expected to express themselves as adults and not like schoolchildren (we have already discussed the difference between school and university). The way a university student of 22 expresses themselves is not expected to differ from the way a lecturer of 55 expresses themselves: everyone follows the same guidelines.

Finally, Universities are institutions in which the mind is supposed to be free to travel, to invent, to wonder and to learn. The student who does not just echo everything they have read but uses this information to draw their own conclusions is the students who excels. The purpose of research and study - the main occupations of university students - is to develop individual ideas. The current idea that Globalisation is the best thing for the planet is spreading everywhere. If you think globalisation stinks [literally: to smell bad. Colloquially: something that is really, really bad] then go and get some FACTS to try to prove yous point and don't be afraid to express yourself. If people don't share your viewpoint it doesn't mean either you or they are wrong. It just means they don't share your viewpoint. That's all.

So, now to the absolute essentials in writing not just for University, but also for business purposes or politically as well.

• Read the Title. This may sound superfluous [unnecessary] but it can lose you marks. Sometimes all your marks. The current assignment "Can East ever Meet West. Discuss" First decide what the words "East" and "West" mean. The East is made up of more countries than just China. Anyone who talks about America as representing the West is going to lose marks. There are hundreds of Western countries. America is simply one of them. Are you going to talk about one aspect of Eastern and Western culture? Religion? Politics? Manners? Education? All of them combined? What about the word "meet"? Does that mean understand? Meet with? Integrate [combine]? Go to war with? You have to decide for yourself exactly HOW you interpret this title. And in your first paragraph you have to make completely clear how you interpret these words and what you are going to be arguing. The words "Discuss" means you have a choice: you can either decide the answer to this question is Yes or No and then provide FACTS to back up your choice. Or you can talk about different sides of the question. Alternatively you may decide you can discuss why this topic is important.




• This is the over-riding, all important and never-to-be-broken rule of all writing. NO PLAGIARISM. Even using someone else's idea of how to interpret the topic is plagiarism. Asking your friend or roommate or classmate how they are going to do it is fine. But using their idea yourself will lose both YOU and HIM/HER marks. Plagiarism is not just stealing someone's words but someone else's ideas. That is their "Intellectual Property". It is against not just the rules but the law itself.




• Academic and business writing should use the objective case. Not the subjective. What this means is that, although one may say "I am going to prove..." in the beginning, from then on say things like "One can see" instead of "We can see". Say "It is/becomes obvious that..." "It can be seen from the evidence", "this proves.." rather than "I think." There is no room in academic writing for adjectives like "horrible", "nice", "beautiful", etc. We talk about "A war", we don't describe it. We discuss a person's ideas, not whether we think they are nice or not, we introduce a person, we don't talk about what they look like.




• All writing, from a letter to an essay, has three parts: a Beginning (Introduction) a Middle (the body) and an End (the conclusion). First, introduce the topic and your interpretation of what it means. Next provide all the evidence or information which proves your point,or which caused you to think this. Finally, Share with us your conclusion which should be logically drawn from the body of your essay.




• Always cite your sources [say where information came from]. If you got the information from a book by for example, John Humphries called Beyond Words put the words of his you are using in inverted commas " follow this, in brackets, by the page you got it from and his last name only.


• e.g. "Language provides us with a revealing mirror..." (Humphries. 1)(We put three dots in if we are not quoting the rest of the sentence. We start off with them if we are not quoting the beginning of the sentence.) If you just got an idea from his book you would say Humphries suggests that changes in language reveals how much society has changed (pp.1, 4, 6) - "pp" means more than one page. If you got your information from the Internet you put the name of the site, for example (Oxford Online).




• At the end of your article you put a "Bibliography" on a separate page. You write the word Bibliography and underneath it, in alphabetical order, you list the books or sites you used. Books and Internet sites are grouped separately. In the case of books you put the full information: the Title of the book(in italics), The author(Family name first), the name of the publisher. The city it was published in and the date it was published:




• Humphries, Barry. Beyond Words.Hodder & Stoughton. London. 2007


• Give the name of the article you quoted from the Internet, then the URL and the date you accessed it.




• All assignments must be TYPED and double spaced. The Title goes first and is usually written slightly bigger, underlined and/or written in bold. Your name and student number go on the right hand side underneath it. Each page must be numbered on the bottom, right hand side. All pages(including the bibliography) must be stapled on the left top corner.




• Finally: punctuation etc. At the start of each paragraph you must indent [go in] as I've done here. You put a space after a comma e.g. bread, butter and cake.(No comma in front of the word "and") You put two spaces after a full stop. All proper nouns (the names of things) must have a capital letter e.g. China, Mary, Liverpool. Inverted commas are used when you quote someone's work or speech e.g. Those famous words "One small step for man, one giant step for Mankind".(The full stop goes AFTER the quote marks.)




• Never start a sentence with the word "and". Do not, EVER, say/write "As we all know". Don't use "What's more". Don't forget that we use an apostrophe (') when we have left a letter out: don't for do not. it's for it is. We also use an apostrophe when something belongs to something e.g. Mary's bag, China's production. And, most important. Use a programme with Spellcheck (the little a,b,c sign on your tool-bar which often has a tick next to it. There is NO EXCUSE for spelling a word incorrectly as all you need to do is get Spellcheck to correct your mistakes for you.




• FINALLY: use English Google not China Google. There is a translation enabler. And don't ever use a word you don't know the meaning of.